


quiet glory

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Grief, Healing, Kingsley takes a long time to change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 22:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15543093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: 20 years have passed since the end of the war and Kingsley cannot let go of his hidden ghosts.One in particular.





	quiet glory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Solanaceae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/gifts).



> don't usually do songfics, but ironically couldn't let go of this idea.

_How does a moment last forever?_

_How can a story never die?_

_It is love we must hold onto_

_Never easy, but we try_

Kingsley Shacklebolt leaves his office for the last time. He clears the shelter he has built for his heart out of paper and ink; and heads for the wilderness beyond. He can't think how to describe the feeling, but it is like going to sleep on a bare bed with no sheets or coverlet. 

His body may have left the cluttered room since the war ended, but his mind has not. It's safe in there, a fortress, defence through distraction. The Minister for Magic must be stoic, unbroken, unbreakable. Emotion has a waiting time of three to five working days. Grief cannot book an appointment during regular business hours. 

The ghosts still linger, at the corner of his mind's eye. When tensions rise, when a murderer is loose, when the budget won't balance, he can feel them pressing in. _What did I die for?_ They whisper in his ear. _My sacrifice is in your hands. Your failure makes it vain._ A land fit for heroes was promised, in a vow sealed with blood. 

Sleep transports him back to the war as smoothly as the spin of a Time Turner. He sees the curses like green comets, the flutter of a veil, the Dark Mark hanging in the sky, the moon of hell. He feels the cold sink in on him. He feels the weight of fresh bones. 

He sees her, drowned in the red light. Her grey eyes turn hollow, her words bleeding, her jaw clenched against the pain. He sees the dead men at her feet.

 _You shouldn't be here_ , he tries to tell her every time. Every time he knows his own reply. _None of us should be here. There shouldn't be a war at all._

It has been twenty years since the end of the war. Exactly seven thousand, three hundred, and sixty five days have passed since Voldemort was defeated, yet he sees it all again, as if it were the play he saw last night.

 

It has been seventy-three hundred days since she died.

 

She takes up residence in his thoughts more stubbornly than his other lost friends. He can feel her reasoning sitting at the right hand of his judgement, unyielding and unoffended by the number of times his judgement tries to force her from his head. Her observations echo through his mind when he judges character.

 

_Sometimes our happiness is captured_

_Somehow, our time and place stand still_

_Love lives on inside our hearts and always will_

 

Retirement is as bad as he feared. Everything he tries to fill his hours with is tainted with friendship. He hears their voices in his books. They march and twirl with every note that spins off his record player. Each time his brush strokes the canvas it is the caress of an unseen ghost.

 

There is so much they could have done. The world feels bare of their monuments, silent of their song. He has tried to be their herald, to fill the sphere their stars should have sat upon, to sing all of their absent harmonies. The gap is too large for one man. His well will not fill their lost years. His reed is hoarse. It is one splinter from broken.

Perhaps that splinter is her.

_Maybe some moments weren't so perfect_

_Maybe some memories not so sweet_

_But we have to know some bad times_

_Or our lives are incomplete_

_Let me be free of her_ , Kingsley prays. He takes the matter into his own hands, telling himself that he is casting a fair light on the dead. It is so convenient to the heart that the dead cannot argue, cannot vex and irritate, cannot disappoint or underwhelm. He tells himself that she was difficult, quick to anger, swift to avenge. She wanted things only black and white, she took too long to change, she had all the subtlety of a brick to the face, all the tact of a boiling kettle to the toes. He tells himself that it is all very well to admire the beauty of her light, but every fire is hot, and must burn something. He tells himself that were she here, he would wish her gone again.

 

_Then when the shadows overtake us_

_Just when we feel all hope is gone_

_We'll hear our song and know once more_

_Our love lives on_

Against his better judgement- against _all_ of his judgement, for better or worse- he finds himself paying a visit to her family. Her father is as dead as a barren crabapple tree that has seen all of its fruit fall and sink into the mire at its feet. All that is left of their raging blood is one last bloom, five years out of Hogwarts.

 

It is the child of peace who opens the front door to him, he realises at once. Her hair is the colour of milky tea, her face round and soft with prosperity, not sharp with hardship. Her eyes are keen and green, but confident of safety.

“Minister!” Surprise and dignity conflict in her, resulting in a half-jump, half-skip. “Come in, come in, this is as much a delight as it is an honour.”

She leads him past no fewer than three desks, the first two nearly bowed beneath the weight of the books and papers stacked upon them, the third with a small clearing made within the paper forest for study. She tells him of her various projects, and a younger Kingsley would be intent upon her words. Something in her passion stirs old memories, more vivid even than any of his dreams. He lets her talk until the tea is made and he has stopped wondering which objects in here are heirlooms, with the fingerprints of the dead still stamped upon them.

 

“Your aunt-“ he cuts himself off.

 

“My aunt? I have her address if you wish to send her an owl, she has moved house recently-“

“Your other aunt.”

The young woman’s eyes soften in understanding.

“Do you remember her, at all?”

“No. I’m sorry, if that’s what you’re here for. I have her photograph-“

“I could not possibly ask-“

“And I have her words. She left a lot of them, all sorts, poems, stories. She kept a diary, I’ve translated it, with commentary. Flourish and Blotts won’t take it without abridgement, but extracts would suit an anthology of war writings. Perhaps your own could be included?”

“I-“ the mention of words seems to have stolen his capacity to form his own. “Good fortune- thank you- I wish you- I- goodbye.”

 

_How does a moment last forever?_

_How does our happiness endure?_

_Through the darkest of our troubles_

_Love is beauty, love is pure_

_Love pays no mind to desolation_

_It flows like a river through the soul_

_Protects, perceives, and perseveres_

_And makes us whole_

 

The first person who could help him is the last person he turns to.

“All these years, you have avoided me,” Dumbledore’s portrait reminds him. “Why now?”

“My own actions are not enough,” Kingsley confesses. “I’ve tried every day for twenty years but I cannot- I cannot do all that-“

“No one ever can.” Dumbledore’s voice is as gentle as an empty church. “A sparrow should not lament his failure to be a falcon.”

Kindness finally pours Kingsley’s tears, more generously than all the war’s pain.

 

“I miss her.” he says finally, the admission washed out of him. “I know what she did, I know the cost, I know the damage. I know it all, I know who she was, I don’t care, I want her back. _I want her back_.”

 

The portrait listens to him, quietly. They both know there is nothing more to be said. There is no need to tell Kingsley that his plea is older than the rocks Hogwarts was built upon. There is no need to tell Kingsley that that plea is echoed, like off rock, by everyone that lost a loved one. There is no need to tell Kingsley that no-one who enters a war can tell how bloody it will be until the smoke clears and the toll is paid.

“Is she at peace?” Kingsley is begging, but he no longer cares. “Is she with you?”

“I am only a painting,” Dumbledore tells him sadly. “I cannot tell.”

The portrait watches Kingsley sink into a chair. “Have you forgotten,” it tells him, “that Hogwarts added no ghosts that night, twenty years ago? Cedric Diggory, Fred Weasley, Colin Creevey, the Lupins, Sirius Black, even the Potters, all of those violent ends, where are their tormented unquiet spirits? Wherever their souls moved to, they left no shade behind.”

“Yes,” Kingsley’s sighs. “Did I do right by them? Tell me I did right by them all.”

“It is too early to tell. It always is, with history.”  Dumbledore cleans his glasses. “But your name has earned its nobility.”

“Let my name sleep.” Kingsley closes his eyes. “It has too many scars.”

“The quick have scars, the dead have none.”

“I want to sleep.”

“You will, again.”

“Will I?” The tears had not stopped. “I loved them, but they will not leave me.”

“You forget, they loved you too, if not as perfectly as we all foolishly wish for. If you had died and they had lived, what would you wish to tell them?”

“I would- I would tell them they were enough. I would tell them I loved them, that I- that I gave my life for people, not a dream.”

“There, you see? Why should they want any different for you?”

“I cannot reach it. I cannot- I cannot encompass it, I cannot accept it, I have no rest. I am not enough.”

“Would their love be enough?”

“Their love is gone. They are all gone.”

“Gone?” Dumbledore’s eyes pierced him. “Why would love be such a feeble thing as that?”

 

_Minutes turn to hours, days to years then gone_

_But when all else has been forgotten_

_Still our song lives on_

_How does a moment last forever_

_When our song lives on_


End file.
